Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 53529 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 268(@200wpm)___ 214(@250wpm)___ 178(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53529 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 268(@200wpm)___ 214(@250wpm)___ 178(@300wpm)
“He also lit the Empire State Building on fire and took full credit,” Kyle adds.
“What the hell is the matter with this guy?” He’s the biggest attention whore I’ve ever met. Sadly, he’s also the smartest person I’ve ever met. Not a good combo.
“He wants us to know he’s serious,” Kyle explains. “Also, he wants you eliminated. He took that interview as a threat, and since he doesn’t need you any longer…”
“Kyle, I’m not going to fake my death again—”
“No one said anything about faking, Huff.”
Takes a moment, but I catch on. “Dude. For real? They want to let him kill me?” I’m not sure who they are, but I can imagine the list: feds, governor of Georgia, Empire State Building fan club.
“What am I going to do?” I mutter, to myself.
“You’re the genius who went public and tried to draw Morris out.”
I tilt back my head. This is all happening because I didn’t kill Morris when I had the chance. “You have to tell me where he might be. Tell me what you know.”
“Why?”
I’m hoping that despite all of Kyle’s lies, this just might be a common goal. “I need to take him out.”
“Think you have the balls?” Kyle asks.
“Yep. Two big ones. Probably way bigger than yours, but who’s measuring?” Me, that’s who. Kyle always tries to stomp on my self-confidence, but I’m done. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the same goes for men. So now’s the time to start construction.
“Aren’t you the funny little man, Huff,” he says with a bite. “I’ll tell you on one condition.”
“What?”
“Now that word’s gotten out about the LA situation, certain interests are demanding we find an antidote.”
I know more than the average person about chemistry. The drug Morris gave the greater LA population causes the adrenal glands to go into overdrive, which heats the body two-point-five degrees, thereby allowing for an increase in oxygen content in the bloodstream. Everyone knows that water molecules expand with heat, and the water in our bodies isn’t excluded from that fact. That hyper-oxygenated blood triggers a volume increase of almost five percent, turning your body into a pressure cooker.
Extremely high blood pressure is just a milder effect.
On top of that, the drug triggers the body to generate an unnatural amount of testosterone. The effect is stamina, strength, bigger muscles, and severe aggression. And massive roid rage.
If the drug is stopped cold turkey, the heart stops pumping at the artificially elevated pace, due to the lack of adrenaline, meanwhile the volume of blood remains elevated. The heart can’t cope with the massive pressure and basically bloats. Then…boom! The arterial walls rupture. The heart basically becomes a bottleneck inside your own body.
My point is that there is no cure, no antidote, other than a slow decrease of the drug so the levels of adrenaline and oxygen drop at a gradual pace.
“Kyle, I’m not an expert, so I’ll keep an open mind, but it’s impossible to find a cure that fast.” So what’s Kyle’s angle here?
“Exactly, you’re not an expert.”
I shake my head even if he can’t see me. Wasn’t I the one who figured out how to get people off this stuff safely? “I’m the only person who’s really studied this.”
“Not true. We’ve had the brightest minds in the world examining Morris’s street drug.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I just said.”
If they’ve been studying the drug, then they must’ve taken some of the batch I got my hands on, which was only enough for forty people for three months. They robbed someone of their dose. “Who didn’t get their dose, Kyle?”
“That isn’t your concern.”
Like fuck it’s not. “Only twenty-nine out of forty students survived. Would it have been higher? Thirty? Thirty-one?”
“Huff, you’re off topic here. You’re not an expert, but the people who are might be able to create an antidote, which would make Morris’s threats useless.”
“And if they do figure it out? How can they produce enough of this stuff in time to help that many people?” The answer is they can’t. The only option is to find Morris and make him produce enough large batches to give some people a chance to come down. Maybe we can’t save them all, but we have to try.
“If we don’t figure it out in time, then they’re no worse off,” Kyle says.
“Unless you tell me where he is so I can talk to him.”
“Give us your blood, Huff, and I’ll make sure you know what we know.”
“Didn’t I already give you some a few months ago?” After I first transformed, Kyle secretly got me in to see a bunch of doctors to help monitor my heart as I slowly detoxed. They took vials and vials of my blood, claiming it was to run tests to check my health.
“It wasn’t enough. They need more.”
Ah. So there it is. “They” need more. I bet they’ve been running experiments this entire time, probably trying to crack the code on how I transformed.